The Ebb Tide: A Trio & Quartette

ABOUT four in the morning, as the captain and Herrick sat together on the rail, there arose from
the midst of the night, in front of them, the voice
of breakers. Each sprang to his feet and stared
and listened. The sound was continuous, like the
passing of a train; no rise or fall could be distinguished; minute by minute the ocean heaved
with an equal potency against the invisible isle;
and as time passed, and Herrick waited in vain
for any vicissitude in the volume of that roaring,
a sense of the eternal weighed upon his mind. To
the expert eye, the isle itself was to be inferred
from a certain string of blots along the starry
heaven. And the schooner was laid to and anxiously observed till daylight.

There was little or no morning bank. A brightening came in the east; then a wash of some ineffable, faint, nameless hue between crimson and

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